OPICA Blog

Understanding Dementia MOOC

The University of Tasmania’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Understanding Dementia, is a FREE 9-week online course. The curriculum focuses on current research and draws upon the expertise of neuroscientists, clinicians and dementia care professionals at the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre. It’s free and anyone can enroll.

Since 2013, 90,000 people from more than 170 countries have enrolled in the course. Enrollment is open now for the session that begins July 24th, 2017 – click HERE for more details.

To obtain the most from this experience, participants should expect to spend approximately 3 hours per week, each of the 9 weeks, engaging with the content and completing related course activities. The course focuses on three units:

The Brain

The Brain provides background content on basic nervous system anatomy and function, followed by a discussion of the diseases that cause dementia, current dementia research, and future directions.

The Diseases

The Diseases explores differences between normal aging and dementia, risk factors, symptoms of dementia, issues surrounding diagnosis, as well as medical management.

The Person

The Person addresses difficulties in recognizing symptoms, living with dementia, progression and staging, palliation, behaviors, management, and alternative therapies.

After completing the final quizzes for all three units of the course, participants will be eligible to download a free certificate of participation, as well as a record of the notes that they have taken throughout the course.

Dementia has been identified as one of the public health issues of the 21st century. Global measures to address this crisis are invaluable to finding the best solutions. OPICA solutes The MOOC and warmly shares this invitation to KNOW MORE. Help spread the word, share this information with your social media networks below.